An inside look at the CAD, CAM and CAE industry - by Roopinder Tara

Pet Peeves

July 06, 2011

So often we are told what we are being shown is the best product ever. We know your products are better than everyone else’s –that’s pride of ownership – we get that. But when you say your new stuff replaces the old stuff...which was just garbage, by the way, we can’t believe anyone fell for that… That’s a pet peeve.

I was seated at a lunch table with other journalists and a CAD CEO, who for reasons soon to be obvious, will remain unnamed. This would normally be a great opportunity to learn more about the company, its direction and strategy. And maybe even get to know the person behind the title. I consider it one of the perks of the job.

This CEO is brash, chatty, and spontaneous. But a few sentences into the conversation, Mr CEO spots me pretending to be a journalist (my open reporter notebook was the clue) and says, just as he was ramping up to something juicy, the fateful words, “Now, this is all off the record…” Damn. Why not just fling my notebook against the wall?

So the rest of this conversation never happened, okay?

“I don't know what we were thinking about [product XXX.] We thought we’d have the market by the …” Short pause while he scans for open notebooks. “But the people who should have bought it had no money.”

Mr CEO proceeds to lambast his entire product line (in favor of the new one, of course).

“Basically, we were going nowhere. We weren’t getting any new customers. We had a big cumbersome product. It was hard to use. It was expensive.”

I am dying to record this, but cannot. No notebook, remember?

I want to blurt out. “Hey, wasn’t that the greatest product in the world when you showed it to us last year? Did you know this all along?” But the guy's on a roll. Plus, everyone at the table is being exceedingly polite, even enthusiastic in their acceptance of Mr CEO’s wisdom.

But I've stopped listening; now the words in my head are drowning out the words in my ears. Why don't I call this guy on what is an obvious and blatant contradiction? He has basically admitted to defrauding us, telling us how great his software is one year, but taking it all back the next.

Some of us more naive ones may have passed on the glowing reports to our readers, though the ones who have been around the block have passed if off as mere CEO bluster. Every year, we get these claims, withdrawn the next year in favor of whatever is being presented on stage. It's as old as software, as old as marketing. A "perfect" product gets improved. We no longer acknowledge the irony, much less rebuke the messenger. To yell "Liar!” would be certain buzz kill. Maybe it would be more refined to flip through the notebook, like they do in shows, looking for a quote from last year through reading glasses…Ah, yes, here it is, "Mr. CEO, didn't you say that version X was the greatest product in the world last year."

June 16, 2011

I’ve probably sat through hundreds of presentations given by excited CAD executives. So many times has one of them pulled out his iPhone to make a point that I am sick of it. I can see it coming as they reach in. Then they pull it out. It's followed by something clever, like:

"10 years ago, it took a roomful of computers to do what this little thing does."

"I don’t need a user manual to operate this."

Hey, look, just cause you have an iPhone, it doesn’t mean we all do. We might secretly want one, but that only makes us resentful.

And stop porting all your software to every damn Apple product. Have any of you tried to look at E-size drawings on an iPhone for more than a few seconds? Yeah, it’s stupidly small. How about CFD on an MacBook Air?

I don’t have any Apple computers. Nor am I yearning for one. My daughter is. She is way cooler than me. But when I look around, I don’t see any engineer using them. Not for production work. Just writing this will ensure that I will be pelted by Mac enthusiasts, but like mysterious forces others insist upon, I still deny their existence without visual proof.

And while I’m at it, can you guys stop trying to relate with us common folk. It’s not coming off. Your experiences are not our experiences. We are not jetting around the world. A few of us lucky bastards may come to your annual user conferences. We don’t mind that you have to go all over the world, that’s ok, you run multinational companies. But even if your tools of the trade are Smartphones and iPads, ours are still workstations with big hulking monitors, usually two of them. You can keep issuing news that this and that is now running on a laptop. Means nothing to us.

Oh, and another thing. We all might all have wives and drive cars in common, so we might let you get away with a little good old fashitioned wife/driving humor. But when the wife is driving a Mercedes...not cool.